Craft & Cork >> Wine
Craft wine cocktail party
The summer is near and you have just made a batch of Pinot Grigio or Vieux Chateau du Roi. There are now several bottles in your cellar just waiting to be uncorked one by one over the next couple of months. Before you enjoy all that wine yourself, remember a cardinal rule of wine drinking: sharing is caring! A fun way to share your wine with your friends, and have a ton of fun, is hosting a cocktail making party – using your own craft wine.
Wine might not first come to mind when you think of cocktail ingredients. But, do a quick Google search for “wine cocktails”, and you will see they are hugely popular. The official definition of a cocktail is simply any beverage that contains three or more ingredients, and at least one of them contains alcohol. Clearly cocktails made with wine fit that definition. The internet is chock-full of recipe ideas on how to make them using almost any style of wine.
Recently we decided to do a team building event at RJS Craft Winemaking. Since we are in the craft wine business, our team events understandably involve wine. We divided into five teams of three and gave each team a couple of weeks to come up with a cocktail idea. The only rule was it had to contain an RJS brand of wine.
On the day of the event, each team came prepared with all the ingredients needed for their cocktail. They had 30 minutes to assemble the drink before it was judged by an esteemed panel comprised of our corporate lawyer, our HR manager and a marketing expert.
Judges based their decisions on three criteria: the taste, the presentation, and the name. Results were extremely close; all the cocktails were not only delicious, they proved we are a creative group of peope! The overall winning cocktail was called a “Fudgsigrio” because it tasted just like a wine infused fudgsicle, and it had a really imaginative name.
A close second was called a “Summer Sunrise Slushie”, which won top marks for presentation because of its alternating layers of red raspberry wine slushie with orange mango wine slushie. It made us all wish we were sitting on a patio on a hot July afternoon, not in the office on a chilly April morning.
If you host your own cocktail making party at home, make sure you have enough nibbles for guests to enjoy while they are creating their cocktail concoctions. And, remember that cocktails always go down easily, so make sure your guests have a safe ride home at the end of the night!
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